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ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT 
AT G. A. R. CELEBRATION, 

gamp emery, september 28, 1915. 

Mr. Chairman, Gentlemen of the Grand Army of the Republic, 

Ladies, and Gentlemen : 

I bid you a very cordial welcome to the capital of the Nation, and 
yet I feel that it is not necessary to bid you welcome here, because 
you know that the welcome is always warm and always waiting 
for you. 

One could not stand in this presence without many moving 
thoughts. It is a singular thing that men of a single generation 
should have witnessed what you have witnessed in the crowded fifty 
years which you celebrate to-night. You took part when you were 
young men in a struggle the meaning of which, I dare say, you 
thought would not be revealed during your lifetime, and yet more 
has happened in the making of this Nation in your lifetime than has 
ever happened in the making of any other nation in the lifetime of a 
dozen generations. 

The Nation in which you now live is not the Nation for whose 
union you fought. You have seen many things come about which 
have made this Nation one of the representative nations of the world 
with regard to the modern spirit of that world, and you have the 
satisfaction, which I dare say few soldiers have ever had, of looking 
back upon a war absolutely unique in this, that instead of destroying 
it healed, that instead of making a permanent division it made a per- 
manent union. You have seen something more interesting than that, 
because there is a sense in which the things of the heart are more 
interesting than the things of the mind. This Nation was from the 
beginning a spiritual enterprise, and you have seen the spirits of the 
two once divided sections of this country absolutely united. A war 
which seemed as if it had the seed of every kind of bitterness in it 
has seen a single generation put bitterness absolutely out of its heart, 
and you feel, as I am sure the men who fought against you feel, that 
you were comrades even then, though you did not know it, and that 
now you knoAv that you are comrades in a common love for a country 
which you are equally eager to serve. 

9844—15 



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This is a miracle of the spirit, so far as national history is con- 
cerned. This is one of the very few wars in which in one sense every- 
body engaged may take pride. Some wars are to be regretted ; some 
wars mar the annals of history ; but some wars, contrasted with those, 
make those annals distinguished, show that the spirit of man some- 
times springs to great enterprises that are even greater than his own 
mind had conceived. 

So it seems to me that, standing in a presence like this, no man, 
whether he be in the public service or in the ranks of private citizens 
merely, can fail to feel the challenge to his own heart, can fail to 
feel the challenge to a new consecration to the things that we all 
believe in. The thing that sinks deepest in my heart as I try to 
realize the memories that must be crowding upon you is this: You 
set the Nation free for that great career of development, of unham- 
pered development, which the world has witnessed since the Civil 
War ; but for my own part I would not be proud of the extraordinary 
physical development of this country, of its extraordinary develop- 
ment in material wealth and financial power, did I not believe that 
the people of the United States wished all of this power devoted to 
ideal ends. There have been other nations as rich as we ; there have 
been other nations as powerful; there have been other nations as 
spirited; but I hope we shall never forget that we created this 
Nation, not to serve ourselves, but to serve mankind. 

I love this country because it is my home, but every man loves his 
home. It does not suffice that I should be attached to it because it 
contains the places and the persons whom I love — because it contains 
the threads of my own life. That does not suffice for patriotic duty. 
I should also love it, and I hope I do love it, as a great instrument 
for the uplift of mankind ; and what you, gentlemen, have to remind 
us of as you look back through a lifetime to the great war in which 
you took part is that you fought that this instrument meant for the 
service of mankind should not be impaired either in its material or 
in its spiritual power. 

I hope I may say without even an implication of criticism upon 
any other great people in the world that it has alwaj's seemed to me 
that the people of the United States wished to be regarded as de- 
voted to the promotion of particular principles of human right. The 
United States were founded, not to provide free homes, but to assert 
human rights. This flag meant a great enterprise of the human 
spirit. Nobody, no large bodies of men, in the time that flag was 
first set up believed with a very firm belief in the efficacy of democ- 
racy. Do you realize that only so long ago as the time of the Ameri- 
can Revolution democracy was regarded as an experiment in the 
world and we were regarded as rash experimenters? But we not 

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only believed in it ; we showed that our belief was well founded and 
that a nation as powerful as any in the world could be erected upon 
the will of the people; that, indeed, there was a power in such a 
nation that dwelt in no other nation unless also in that other nation 
the spirit of the people prevailed. 

Democracy is the most difficult form of government, because it is 
the form under which you have to persuade the largest number of 
persons to do anything in particular. But I think we were the more 
pleased to undertake it because it is difficult. Anybody can do what 
is easy. We have shown that we could do what was hard, and the 
pride that ought to dwell in your hearts to-night is that you saw to it 
that that experiment was brought to the day of its triumphant dem- 
onstration. We now know, and the world knows, that the thing 
that we then undertook, rash as it seemed, has been practicable, and- 
that we have set up in the world a government maintained and pro- 
moted by the general conscience and the general conviction. 

So I stand here not to welcome you to the Nation's capital as if 
I were your host but merely to welcome you to your own capital, be- 
cause I am, and am proud to be, your servant. I hope I shall catch, 
as I hope we shall all catch, from the spirit of this occasion a new 
corisecration to the high duties of American citizenship. 



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